Seitokai no Ichizon

Summary:

Ken Sugisaki is the hot-blooded vice-president of the Hekiou Academy Student Council who yearns to live “the harem dream”, being surrounded by nubile girls craving for his attention. In the council, he is surrounded by girls, but it comes with the price of getting pummeled time and time again for his rambuctious comments. Under the advice of the self-proclaimed President Kurimu Sakurano, his main duty is to record minutes of the council meetings, which most of the time end up to be nothing more than random daily conversations.

Like drama, comedy is not an easy genre to discuss because to be a good comedy anime, the key word to be emphasised is consistency. It’s necessary for a comedy anime to be constantly consistent in a number of factors: the delivery of the humour and the jokes, the material and characterisation, just to name a few. Seitokai no Ichizon had quite a good run with delivering the funnies, but throughout the series it is marred by inconsistencies in a number of aspects. In fact, it’s quite disappointing to see how it has a promising start, only to later stumble into common pitfalls.

Ichizon kicks off on a positive note by following the same path as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, using real life instances as its main material for comedy. The difference between Zetsubou Sensei and Ichizon is that the former’s material is more extensive to discuss and expand, ranging from social satires to black humour accompanied by deep social commentaries and venomous punchlines. The latter’s material range is more limited, using the otaku media only to be funny most of the time. The first few episodes, though hilarious, uses its material so profusely that many viewers may suspect Ichizon to fizzle out their supply of otaku media-focused material in no time. Frankly, that did happen midway through the series, becoming a standard harem comedy with only the occasional humorous one-liners by the sexually charged Sugihara serving as the saving grace to the series. The material used in the first few episodes – ranging from other anime titles to eroge and visual novels – becomes nonexistent halfway through the series, before it reverts back to it towards the end and this inconsistency derails the attention of viewers. The midportion of the series also experiences an unexpected slowdown in the pace, a conspicuous change in contrast to the breakneck speed it initially goes at.

Another inconsistency issue deals with the actual jokes delivered throughout Ichizon. While the characters naturally take charge of tickling the funny bones of viewers, episode 3 sees the series taking a bizarre approach towards comedy, letting the jokes run amok in random directions and strangely take charge of the episode itself. The overall issue on the jokes is that while some hit the mark, a handful of them feel either too self-conscious or forced to be funny; in other words, rather than being funny, it tries too hard to be funny. Speaking of being funny, it’s rather ironic to see how Ichizon takes shots at other anime titles for being stereotypical, while along the way the show itself bears stereotypical traits as a harem comedy. It’s not good when a comedy doesn’t deliver the goods constantly, but it’s a comedic error for one to trip on its own jokes.

The characters in Ichizon however, is a mixed barrel altogether. Sugihara is reminiscent of Akikan’s Kakeru for his bravado-laced outbursts, sexual fantasies and blatant tenacity, and yet be feministic and sensitive towards girls now and then. Although the traits are somewhat contradictory from the onset, a few viewers including myself can grow to like him towards the end. The only peeve I have on him is how his character archetype rubs me the wrong way, begging attention of the viewers as well as his student council representatives. As for the rest of the student council, their characters can be side-splitting at times, particularly Chizuru’s dominatrix demeanour and Mafuyu’s boy love-laden imagination, but they’re generally predictable and hence, viewers can grow weary by their foretelling responses.

Ichizon is not a terrible comedy anime per se, but it is heavily marred by inconsistency issues. Inconsistency issues can ultimately ruin a show, so to see it creeping away from its full potential episode by episode is disappointing. In the end, it’s similar to Lucky Star because it’s a show for otakus and, as mentioned right in the first episode, Ichizon is about a student council, a “place for boring people to have fun conversations every day”. This show may strike the right chords for some viewers but it falls short for my liking, not because of what it turns out to be, but what it could have been.